Another priest we featured was also a diplomat, an American who had been the Vatican’s No. 2 official in India. A top aide to Pope John Paul II was warned in the 1990s that the priest had abused an Ohio girl. But the priest remained on duty until around the time of our inquiries in 2003.

Yet Pope Francis was alerted to the Dominican Republic diplomat’s misconduct before the secret transfer last August, authorities told TheTimes. The allegations should have been reported to police, according to Vatican rules.

The only way the diplomat could face charges in the Dominican Republic now is if the Vatican, an independent city-state, agrees to return him.

UPDATE: The Vatican announced Monday that its former Dominican Republic diplomat, Josef Wesolowski, has lost his immunity and could be tried in local courts.

On the continuation of this post, I’ve republished some of our stories showing Rome’s involvement in international transfers of abusers.

Atef-Zafarmand's medical office advertising remains online. "Strict compliance to medical ethics is a top priority," he says on one website.

Legal problems are multiplying for Dr. Alireza Atef-Zafarmand, a Dallas doctor whom regulators have suspended because of sexual abuse allegations.

The Texas Medical Board, which is seeking to discipline him further, said in a legal filing today that it’s refusing to give the doctor contact information for 10 accusers. It cited “his propensity for witness intimidation and harassment.”

“The litigation itself is unlawful intimidation,” the legal filing states, noting that “an individual who provides testimony to the board in good faith is immune from civil prosecution.” It says Atef-Zafarmand “specifically injected intimidation into the civil proceeding by pleading that he is entitled to ‘punish and set an example of’” one woman who testified at a board hearing and by disclosing the medical records of another.

The board made a similar filing yesterday in one of Atef-Zafarmand’s Dallas lawsuits. It asked for an injunction barring him and his lawyers from disclosing confidential information.

Atef-Zafarmand’s license was suspended last year after a Dallas Morning News investigation of sexual abuse allegations at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He denies wrongdoing and has never faced criminal charges. At least three women have told police that he choked them during sexual attacks.

“I am in some limitations these days,” says Dr. Alireza Atef-Zafarmand’s page on www.voly.org. “But still I have a burning desire to to be helpful to others. I can be helpful in basic things: cook, or provide personal care. I can also be helpful in more complicated matters such as provide some help in complicated medical condition as long as it is not considered medical practice.”

The page also says he has been in the “medical field since age 18 without any interruption.” It does not mention that the Texas Medical Board suspended his license last year because of alleged sexual or physical abuse of 10 women. Atef-Zafarmand denies wrongdoing.

Voly.org shows him to be a volunteer for Dallas-based New Century Hospice. That’s not true, hospice company executives told me today.

“He’s never worked for us,” said David Gasmire, chief executive officer. “He never laid a hand on our patients.” Continue reading →

Aivar Bracka denied wrongdoing but admitted exposing himself to some patients.

The British penile reconstruction expert lost his medical license after regulators found that he sexually abused young patients. Then a UT Southwestern Medical Center official arranged a short teaching stint for him at a Dallas children’s hospital.

These are among the revelations in records recently obtained by The Dallas Morning News. It’s the second case to emerge this year in which some UTSW officials turned a blind eye to physicians who’d been disciplined over abuse complaints.

“Because the judgment exercised was viewed as inconsistent with our values and expectations of our leaders, he was removed from his role as division chief,’’ a UTSW statement said. Administrators “would not have approved this invitation” if they had known about it.

Dr. Warren Snodgrass

Snodgrass has also lost his title as chief of urology at Children’s. He has not commented publicly.

His dealings with Bracka raise questions about whether UTSW and Children’s check the qualifications of all visiting faculty. Policies released by UTSW say nothing about requiring such checks.

No policy changes are planned because “this was determined to primarily reflect a lapse in judgment,” UTSW said. “It is our expectation that irrespective of policy, faculty will exercise judgment and act in accordance with our values that are consistent with our missions and the trust placed in us as an institution.”

Children’s said it checks the credentials of everyone who “will be involved in direct patient care or have direct patient contact.” Bracka, the hospital said, had no such duties, so “there was no need to credential him.”

But Children’s nevertheless has serious concerns about the matter, hospital spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said today. UTSW, she said, did not disclose Bracka’s background before he moderated a two-day penile surgery workshop in 2011. He spoke in a Children’s auditorium where doctors watched live video of surgeries being performed on boys.

“We have expectations of our physicians in positions of leadership that they’re going to use good judgment,” Sullivan said. “Parents are putting their children in our hands, and it’s a sacred trust.”

‘Little insight’

Bracka was once a top international authority on repairing a male genital birth defect called hypospadias. But his career has been crumbling publicly since 2007, when British medical authorities barred him from seeing patients without a chaperone. Two years later, he was acquitted in a criminal trial of indecently assaulting patients, but also suspended from practicing medicine. His license was revoked in late 2010, with regulators finding that he performed sexual acts on or in the presence of five adolescent boys and a young man.

He did this under the guise of showing them how they would look and function after surgery, according to regulators, and then initiated sexual encounters — usually masturbation, but also oral sex in one case. “Bracka has shown little insight into the gravity of his actions,” the regulators wrote.

Bracka and his lawyer in London did not respond to interview requests.

UTSW records say Snodgrass invited Bracka in early 2010 to teach for four days in March 2011. Snodgrass learned of the license revocation months before Bracka arrived but didn’t see the exposure admission until after he departed, the records say.

Bracka provoked controversy on his first day of teaching, during a lecture at UTSW about men’s genital diseases. The next day, UTSW’s urology department chairman began emailing Snodgrass about his concerns.

Dr. Claus Roehrborn

First, wrote Dr. Claus Roehrborn, doctors at the session “had done extensive web research” about the license revocation. That “must have affected the lecture and how it was perceived somewhat.”

Second, Bracka made “frequent comments about ‘good looking penises’ and said that “to make up for lost time he screwed anybody and anything,” Roehrborn wrote. Records released by UTSW don’t explain the context for Bracka’s remarks.

Patient care?

After the lecture, Bracka was scheduled to answer questions from less experienced doctors about their cases and to see at least one UTSW patient. It isn’t clear from the records whether that happened.

Sullivan, the Children’s spokeswoman, said “he did not demonstrate any surgical techniques.” Montoya’s letter, she said, used “general language” from the hospital’s contract with Bracka. It was intended “to indicate that during the conference the physician audience would be viewing real-time surgical case demonstrations and Dr. Bracka, as the moderator, would speak to the surgical techniques being performed.”

The letter went to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott as part of an effort — so far successful — to keep The News from seeing the contract.

Before flying home to England, Bracka took a two-day beach vacation with Snodgrass. Joining them in Galveston was another visiting professor who performed surgery during the workshop.

Snodgrass responded to his chairman’s concerns by apologizing for not telling him about the license revocation. “I should have discussed this with you,” he wrote in an email.

“I have known Aivar for some time, and have greatly benefited from my professional interactions with him,” added Snodgrass. He noted Bracka’s reputation as a penile surgery expert and said: “It was only in that spirit that I invited him.”

Snodgrass, who also has an international reputation, said some in Britain blamed the license revocation on “political correctness.”

Roehrborn responded by focusing on his practical concerns. “Many hospitals/medical schools,” he told Snodgrass, “could not use funding to support a visiting doctor who has lost his license.”

‘You have little choice’

Children’s, a private nonprofit entity, paid for Bracka’s air travel and $2,000 honorarium, records show. UTSW, a state institution, paid for the other visiting professor.

UTSW also obtained a temporary license to practice medicine for the other visitor, Texas Medical Board records show. But the university did not obtain one for Bracka.

A visiting professor who “exercises medical judgment, renders an opinion or gives advice concerning the diagnosis or treatment of a patient” is considered to be practicing medicine, according to medical board rules. Such a visitor would need a Texas license.

Board spokeswoman Megan Goode said she could not answer specific questions about Bracka. “But hypothetically, an applicant with this type of history certainly would have raised concerns and very likely would have been denied a license,” she said.

When emailing with his chairman, Snodgrass said Bracka remained in high demand as a visiting professor and would serve in that role later in 2011 at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

A few days later, a Seattle colleague emailed Snodgrass to say, “I need to talk to you privately ASAP.” Their ensuing communications apparently led Snodgrass to read details of the British license revocation case for the first time.

“There is a statement that Aivar admitted to exposing his penis to a few patients, and that alone is enough of a problem,” Snodgrass wrote to his colleague. “My advice based on that admission is that you have little choice but to cancel.”

Dr. Alireza Atef-Zafarmand

The News reported in February that UTSW helped another physician whom government investigations had implicated in abuse. Dr. Alireza Atef-Zafarmand was put on probation but allowed to graduate from a training program in 2007 despite findings that he sexually harassed female co-workers at one hospital — which fired him — and tried to hypnotize a female technician at another. After graduation, UTSW endorsed him for work at Dallas-area hospitals, with one of his supervisors ranking his ethics as “excellent.”

Atef-Zafarmand has denied wrongdoing in previous interviews with The News. A lawyer who represented him in a medical board hearing Friday did not respond to a request for comment today.

Atef-Zafarmand “got angry during the hearing, at one point wagging his finger, pointing his finger at the [state's] attorneys and disparaging the character of the witnesses,” said board spokeswoman Leigh Hopper. “He cast himself as the victim.”

But “the evidence showed an escalating pattern of predatory and assaultive behavior,” Hopper said. “It appeared he has been using his medical license to mislead and gain control over women.” Continue reading →

Update at 10:06 a.m. Feb. 28: UT Southwestern has responded to my requests for information about Dr. Ricardo Diaz, saying that he has privileges at St. Paul University Hospital but is not a UTSW faculty member. “We review every physician who has a board order, and they must complete the requirements of the order in a timely fashion to maintain privileges,” UTSW spokesman Michael Berman added. “As we do not discuss specific cases, we will not have any further comment.”

Original item at 1:43 p.m. Feb. 27: One is losing his license. Another is being fined. A third must have his practice monitored. And one merely must get some professional education.

They’re among at least four recently disciplined Dallas-area doctors who have been accused of misconduct with women and other failings, Texas Medical Board records show. Here are summaries of the cases:

Stevan Cordas was fined $3,000 and ordered to get professional education. The medical board initially accused him of sexually abusing a patient but ultimately found that he merely performed an “inadequate” examination of her breast. She told police that he touched her inappropriately, according to board records; prosecutors did not pursue a criminal case. Cordas, whose first name is also spelled Stevane, has an office in Hurst and has performed workers comp evaluations for the state of Texas.

Ricardo Diaz was ordered to get professional education. The medical board found that he prescribed “dangerous drugs” to a woman with whom he was having an intimate relationship. He didn’t physically examine her, obtain a medical history or keep treatment records. Diaz has practiced in Dallas at St. Paul University Hospital, which is part of UT Southwestern Medical Center. UTSW officials did not respond to my requests for information.

The monitors also identified a new type of safety breakdown: Parkland’s police department has been doing a poor job of screening incoming ER patients and visitors for weapons.

There were “a number of events in December and January with potentially dangerous objects not detected,” the monitors wrote. “Checkpoint officers were not consistently adhering to Parkland protocols.”

The officers’ performance improved after retraining, the report says.

An investigation by The News recently identified another problem with the Parkland police force: poor investigation of allegations that caregivers sexually abused patients. No one was arrested in 25 cases the newspaper reviewed, and some people involved in the cases alleged cover-ups. Hospital officials say there has been no effort “to suppress or overlook incidents.”

The Rev. Fernando Sayasaya admitted to me that he sexually abused boys in four countries.

New attention is coming Monday for our landmark 2004-2005 series on the Catholic Church’s international movement of sexual abuse suspects to escape justice. The GMA Network, a leading broadcaster in the Philippines, interviewed me this morning about the project we called “Runaway Priests: Hiding in Plain Sight.”

I told Severino today that our series focused on both the church’s failings and those of law enforcement. A prime example was the Rev. Fernando Sayasaya, who, like Garcia, fled the U.S. and returned to his native Philippines. My colleague Reese Dunklin and I found that the justice system had not tried to bring Sayasaya back for trial and ignored accusations that his religious superiors ordered him to hide abroad.

It isn’t clear why Garcia stayed in ministry after the admission. He continued to lead a large group of boys at a rural religious compound and oversaw worship practices for the massive Cebu Archdiocese. Among his international credentials: He led his cardinal’s advance team in Rome when Pope John Paul II declared a Filipino sainthood candidate to be blessed.

As we told you last month, the fine by the Department of State Health Services is the largest ever given to a Texas hospital. It is 20 times as much as the previous largest — $50,000 assessed against Houston’s Ben Taub General Hospital in 2007.

Parkland said last month it had reached the deal to avoid further legal action into complaints made between Jan. 1, 2011, and May 31, 2012.

Sherry is at this morning’s meeting and tells me hospital board members unanimously gave their approval without any public discussion. Paul Leslie, the hospital’s top lawyer, appeared to read portions of the settlement agreement, but provided no additional explanation.

Hospital officials declined to comment after the vote, Sherry reports. They referred her to previous written statements made by board chairwoman Debbie Branson, who signed the agreement last month. Parkland acknowledged no wrongdoing as part of the deal.

In the agreement, state safety regulators highlighted nine examples of poor patient care as part of an “influx of complaints” at Parkland.